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Details?? Hmmm.......age is settin' in, so let's see if I can remember that far back!

I built this Ferrari from around August of 1998 and finished it just before the Mid Atlantic NNL in May '99. The reason I can remember the date is because I wanted to build this specifically for that NNL.

The kit I used was the Italeri version which I think is the most accurate of all the 250 GT SWB versions. I was gonna use the Gunze kit.......but it's proportions were odd in places (kinda wide) and the ESCI kit was/is just plain wrong, wrong WRONG!!

I opened the doors and kept the window frames............in hindsight I would make these out of brass today, they're very delicate and have snapped a couple times.

The engine is Norm Veber's from Replica and Miniatures and was a kit in itself!! The engine took about 3 weeks to build and you have to follow the instructions to a T!

If you ever buy this engine kit I highly recommend you order an extra set of carb stacks because they are molded in a very thin resin...............once they drop on the floor, they're toast! I would also recommend that the engine have something very sturdy to stand on (a good engine base) as simply the engine turning over on it's side can damage the carbs.

The chassis was detailed as well as I knew at the time. Using photos loaned to me by Harold Bradford......he had pictures of a 250 GTO under restoration which showed the full underside of the car. 250 GTO and GT's were pretty much the same underneath save for the GTO's dry sump system.

I detailed the underside with fuel lines, brake lines, muffler clamps and brackets, and tried to use different shades of aluminum.

The floor was cut away and replaced with actual aluminum sheet.............the actual car is probably not that clean underneath, but I wanted to represent what a pristine restored car woud be like just finished from the shop.

BTW, I was trying replicate Sterling Moss's 1961 winner at Lemans that year, thus the markings on the car.

The interior was done using Reps and Mins interior set and real cherry wood steering wheel. The shifter comes in the engine kit, and the shifter ball was painted using Alclad.

The dash itself was converted from LHD to RHD as per the actual car...............this was tricky because I had to do some "reverse engineering" to get the gauges and switches in the right place. Likewise, I had to make sure the engine was also configured for RHD as the throttle position had to be in the right place. :mrgreen:

The Borrani wire wheels are Detail Masters........mounted on Monogram tires with the letters facing on the inside. The most difficult thing was mounting the wheels so that they all sit square on the ground.

I painted the model with Krylon Navy Blue, with their gray primer as a base. Even though the model was molded in red, I noticed no bleed through. After I let the body set for a couple weeks, I polished the body out with a polishing kit.

I can't remember where the roundels came from (someone may have given them too me) but the stripe across the nose was painted decal paper that was cut to fit.

All in all, this was a somewhat challenging kit to do but I do have another Italeri kit I would like to make a regular street version out of sometime.